SHORT NOTES ON ENGLISH POETS:
CHAUCER; SPENSER; THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE; MILTON.
It was no unmemorable day in the history of English letters when Thomas Campbell, the Callistratus of Great Britain, undertook to select and comment on his Specimens of the British Poets with the hand which had given to England her only two great national songs. No hand, it must have been thought, could be fitter for this only less glorious task; and with all its grave and many shortcomings his collection held its place for full sixty years, unrivalled and unapproached, as the very flower of our too manifold anthologies. A yet greater and heavier undertaking has in our own day been attempted and accomplished by a more thoughtful and sometimes a more trustworthy critic than Campbell. Having before this had occasion to remark in terms of somewhat strong deprecation on the principle adopted by Mr. William Rossetti in his revision and rearrangement of the text of our greatest lyric poet, I am the more desirous to bear witness to the elevation and the excellence of his critical workmanship in his Lives of Famous Poets. On some points I differ gravely from his estimate; once or twice I differ from it on all points; but on the whole I find it not acceptable merely but
